Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.